December Community of Practice Meeting

All the holiday festivities have made us a bit tardy in sharing an update about our latest Community of Practice meeting, which took place on the 15th. This was a historic event, as it was the first Community of Practice meeting where all five Dream Flight simulators in the continental U.S. were represented! That’s right, we had flight directors, educators, and admins from the IKS Titan, Highlander, Buccaneer, Dreamcatcher, and Horizon in attendance!

The meeting kicked off bright and early at J.E. Harrison Middle School in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District where the flight directors toured the IKS Highlander and its accompanying Mission Ops STEAM lab.

Mike Kaleta had the morning very nicely organized and he invited Dr. Lutz, Dr. Peretin, Denice Sedlacek and Andrea Hoffman (most of their upper administration) and Scott Ross to attend. We also had Brian Colgan and a Phys Ed teacher from Burrell who is training to be a Flight Director, Jamie Harris from Penn Hills, Heather and Mike from Shaler Area, and Heather and Rachel from Washington D.C.

We met in the “Mission Ops” room for juice and cookies for about 30 minutes and then we toured the Highlander simulator. Mike Kaleta showed everyone several of the cinematic trailers that he’s recently made of his students running missions, and then we had a nice long discussion about our successes and challenges. Everyone was extremely positive and energized!

We’re all looking forward to at least three more Community of Practice meetings in 2016 and we’ve tentatively arranged to meet at Penn Hills in February-March.

We then came to Shaler Area Elementary School where Mike Penn ran a 4th grade Pandemic mission in the Titan. Everyone stayed until about 2pm. Some of the SASD administration were able to attend and meet everyone, including Bryan O’Black, Assistant Superintendent.

Heather and Rachel from D.C. were the last two to leave. It was great having them meet with full Pittsburgh Flight Director cohort, and we’re so glad they were able to make the trip!